Keystone College Astronomers Fascinated by Meteor

BENTON TOWNSHIP — With all the action in the sky Friday it has astronomers in our area talking and watching the sky closely, too.

It certainly was a busy Friday in the sky, and astronomers and science students of Keystone College are fascinated by these rare occurrences.

It was a rare and action packed Friday in our skies. With the meteor in Russia, to the asteroid that passed just 17,000 miles away from earth.

Most people were surprised to see what happened in Russia when they turned on the news. Kathleen fox said she had never seen anything like this.

She’s an environmental science student at keystone college in Laplume.

“Well I hadn’t really heard anything till I went online to check my e-mail, and I just saw the little news blip saying meteorite in Russia. I watched the video and it was just really neat how it was just coming in across the sky, it got really bright as it went by the camera. Then you could see it just exploding over Russia,” said environmental science student Kathleen Fox.

Director of the Keystone Observatory Tom Cupillari says even though events like this seem rare, it could just be that we don’t see all the meteors that pass through the earth’s atmosphere.

“You don’t hear of it all that often but the thought I’ve always had is, if the globe is three-quarters covered with oceans it could be happening a lot more often than we know,” said Director of the Observatory Tom Cupillari.

The observatory gets a list every two weeks for objects to look at so there’s always someone keeping their eyes on the sky.

Just hours after the meteor hit Russia, an asteroid, NASA is calling DA 14, was the center of attention. This one was as big as a football field but thankfully, passed 17,000 miles away from earth.

“It’s just coincidence that two events like this happen in the same day,” Cupillari added.

The Keystone Observatory itself has a sky cam on the roof that records the entire sky so events like this cannot be missed.